The Beinart Notebook

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Our guest is the Gaza-born political analyst Muhammad Shehada, who I’ve long admired for his ability to criticize Israel without exonerating Hamas and to criticize Hamas without exonerating Israel. We talk about the recent protests in Gaza against Hamas, and for an end to Israel’s slaughter.

I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next few months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.

I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, the latest work by the brilliant essayist, Raja Shehada, What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?

I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.

Here’s an update from Hossam’s sister, Abir:

I check on them at least six times a day. Every time they don’t answer, my heart drops, fearing the worst. Their hearts are heavy with grief, mourning the loss of loved ones and friends. My brother Hossam prays constantly—for an end to the war, for his family’s safety, and for all the innocent people suffering in Gaza. He told me they wake up and fall asleep to the sounds of bombs, ambulances, and the cries of women and children begging God for mercy. They are fasting for Ramadan, praying, and waiting—either for the war to end or for their lives to. It is heartbreaking to realize that this is their reality. That their lives feel as if they hold no value. That no one is standing up for them in the face of such injustice. Because of your generosity, Hossam was able to rent a small two-bedroom apartment, buy new clothing, mattresses, and some canned food—for his family and anyone in need after they leave. He had also begun the process of gathering the necessary medical and personal documents to leave. But now, everything is on hold. Please continue to support his campaign so that we can get them to safety as soon as the war ends. They need us now more than ever. Please keep them in your prayers.

Friday Zoom Call

This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. Our guest will be the Gaza-born political analyst Muhammad Shehada, who I’ve long admired for his ability to criticize Israel without exonerating Hamas and to criticize Hamas without exonerating Israel. We’ll talk about the recent protests in Gaza against Hamas, and for an end to Israel’s slaughter.

Friday’s zoom call is for paid subscribers.

Book Tour

(We’ll update this every week.)

On Tuesday, April 1, I’ll be speaking at Penn State.

On Monday, April 7, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School.

On Tuesday, April 8, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, and then later that night, at First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the Palestinian human rights activist, Issa Amro.

On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.

On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.

On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, California

On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.

On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.

Book Reviews and interviews

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza was reviewed (negatively) in Britain’s Fathom Journal. I also discussed it on Budd Mishkin’s podcast.

Sources Cited in this Week’s Video

Jenner Stands Firm.

Things to Read

(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)

In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Alex Kane details the shifting focus of the Anti-Defamation League.

Rashid Khalidi and Adam Shatz on Columbia University’s surrender.

Etan Nechin on how the right took over Israeli media.

Hossam Shabat’s last article.

See you on Friday,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So, I’ve spent the last couple of months since Trump returned to power, I guess you know, in a state of some shock and some despair, and also perhaps some shame, if I’m honest about it, because I don’t really feel like I have done enough in my own really small way to respond to with this really naked effort at establishing an authoritarian regime in the United States. I mean, I did speak at one protest. But I really haven’t been out kind of out in the streets and, you know, and again I can make excuses like everybody else about other things that I’m doing. But I really just have felt like I haven’t really in my own way, kind of risen to the occasion. And so, I feel a little bit like I’m throwing stones from a glass house when I condemn others.

But I do think that, you know, one of the excuses I might make or one of the reasons I think in general we haven’t seen the kind of mass movement against Trump that we need is that I think a lot of people have been demoralized by seeing how many people in positions of power, people of institutions—and institutions that are far more powerful than us—have capitulated when they’re actually in a much stronger and less vulnerable position, whether it’s Jeff Bezos of the Washington Post, or these other tech moguls, or the president of Columbia University, or some of these big law firms.

And so, I think I was surprised by how emotionally I reacted when I read in the New York Times on Saturday that there were that there were a couple of law firms that actually were not capitulating. I got the hardcover of the newspaper on Saturday of the New York Times because I don’t have my phone on Shabbat. So, I was reading this story, and I had this very strong emotional reaction when I read about this firm Jenner and Block, this law firm that unlike some of the other big firms is not capitulating to Trump, not making a deal behind closed doors, but basically fighting him in court. And not just doing that, but they’ve created this website called Jenner stands firm to basically publicize their fight and to ask for support.

And, you know, again, I don’t know much about Jenner and Block. They could be doing all kinds of bad things and have bad clients. I don’t know. But it just made me realize how hungry I was to see some significant institution actually not knuckle under, you know. And I began to think, you know, imagine if this weren’t just this law firm, but it wasn’t just Jenner stands firm, but it was like, you know, the University of Michigan stands firm, Harvard stands firm, you know, the University of Texas stands firm, that CNN and MSNBC stand firm, the Washington Post stands firm. And you just had this cascading of different institutions just saying no, you know, we’re not going to. We’re going to fight you with everything we have in the name of the survival of American liberal democracy, and the principles of whatever work we claim to do, whether it’s academic freedom, or independence of the press, or the right to provide counsel to your clients or all of these building blocks of old democracy that these different institutions claim to be to be serving, you know.

And, you know, I understand that inside these institutions, people will say, well, we’re going to lose because Trump is, you know, he runs the federal government and they’re much more than us. They may well lose. I mean, standing on your principles, you could very well lose. But, you know, it’s not as if appeasement works well with Trump, right. I mean, he’s a classic bully, so appeasement doesn’t work. And so, it just seems to me If you may lose either way, why not at least go down with your head held high while retaining your dignity, while acting in a way that you can speak with pride about to your grandchildren one day, you know, when people look back at this moment of unique national peril.

I mean, isn’t that better than debasing yourself, like disgracing yourself, abandoning the principles you claim and believe in, and then losing anyway, li…

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Our guest is Arab Barghouti, the youngest son of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian political leader who has been in prison in Israel for the last 23 years. Arab is the head of international relations for the international campaign to release his father and all Palestinian political prisoners.

I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next few months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.

I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, Fida Jiryis’ beautiful memoir, Stranger in My Own Land.

I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.

Friday Zoom Call

This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. Our guest will be Arab Barghouti, the youngest son of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian political leader who has been in prison in Israel for the last 23 years. Arab is the head of international relations for the international campaign to release his father and all Palestinian political prisoners.

Friday’s zoom call is for all paid subscribers.

Book Tour

(We’ll update this every week.)

On Monday, March 24, I’ll be speaking at the University of Vermont.

On Tuesday, March 25, I’ll be speaking at Middlebury College.

On Monday, April 7, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School.

On Tuesday, April 8, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, and then later that night, at First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the Palestinian human rights activist, Issa Amro.

On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.

On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.

On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, California.

On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.

On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.

Book Reviews and interviews

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza was reviewed (positively) in South Africa’s Daily Maverick and (negatively) in Britain’s Jewish Chronicle. I also discussed the book with Nathan Robinson of Currents Affairs and with Brown University’s Glenn Loury.

Sources Cited in this Week’s Video

A few years ago, I wrote about the absence in mainstream US discourse of the concept of “anti-Palestinianism.”

Response

In response to my video last week suggesting that Trump and establishment Jewish organizations are redefining what it means to be a Jew, Barnett Rubin suggests that this constitutes a Jewish version of the Islamic notion of “takfir.”

Things to Read

(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)

Jewish Currents (subscribe!) translates and republishes Tawfiq Da’adli’s story “On the Squeezing.”

For the Foundation for Middle East Peace, I talked to Naji Abbas, Director of the Prisoners and Detainees Department for Physicians for Human Rights Israel, about Israel’s detention and torture of health care workers in Gaza.

In The Atlantic, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber details the dangers of the Trump administration’s attack on Columbia.

A Jewish student at Columbia writes about his friend, Mahmoud Khalil.

Daniel Levy’s comments on Gaza at the United Nations.

Muhammad Shehada on what would happen if Hamas left Gaza.

See you Friday,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So, Columbia University has essentially capitulated to the Trump administration’s demands, and with implications for the future of Colombia and other American universities that would be very far reaching. We don’t know the full repercussions yet. But I think it’s just important to understand that—although Donald Trump is doing this because he wants to domesticate and cripple universities just because they could be centers of resistance and critical thought against his authoritarian rule in the same way that he wants to cripple and domesticate independent media, or law firms that might sue him, or the Justice Department that might be independent of his control, all these things, even though that’s clearly Trump’s motivation—his ability to use antisemitism effectively rests on the fact that there is a discourse about antisemitism that has existed long before October 7th, but then intensified since the October 7th massacre, that has been endorsed by many, many Democrats and therefore makes them kind of complicit in this.

And I think the critical thing we have to understand about what’s wrong with this discourse of antisemitism, which has helped lead us to this place, is not that it’s wrong to be very concerned about antisemitism. Of course, we should be very concerned about antisemitism. The problem is that when you discuss antisemitism in the context of the Israel and Palestine conflict, where there are two national groups there, one has to pair it with a conversation about anti-Palestinian bigotry, right. Talking about antisemitism in the context of Israel-Palestine is fundamentally different in that way than talking about it in the context of white nationalism or some other historical episode.

In this case, the question is how are people are being treated fairly and equally? Are they being discriminated against because of their position to this relationship between Israeli Jews and Palestinians? But one naturally has to ask the question about the other group as well, about Palestinians—if you think that Palestinians are people who deserve the same treatment as Jews, right. And so, if one imagined that the conversation about antisemitism was paired with a conversation about anti-Palestinian bigotry, I think the conversation about antisemitism would have to be radically different, right. Because when one asked the question do Jewish students feel uncomfortable or even unsafe when they hear slogans like ‘Palestine will be free from the river to the sea’ or ‘globalize the intifada,’ one would also have to ask the question how does it make Palestinian students feel when they hear the slogan, you know, ‘I stand with the IDF’ or ‘Israel has the right to defend itself,’ right?

And when we ask the question about harassment, are there Jewish students who are literally being targeted for wearing kippot, or other things, right. We would also ask the question, are there Palestinian students who are being targeted for wearing keffiyehs? Because I suspect that if there are Jewish students, tragically, you know, walking around Columbia’s campus or other campuses, who get yelled at because they’re wearing kippot, or they’re wearing a Star of David or whatever, I think it’s a pretty good guess that there are also Palestinian students who are getting called ‘terrorist’ or all kinds of nasty things, right, if they’re wearing a keffiyeh.

If we thought about the rules about protest, right, one of the things that Trump wants to do—but these universities have been doing ever since October 7th—is really clamp down on the rules around protest, we would have to ask the question, not just are Students for Justice in Palestine violating these new, very onerous rules about protest, but is the pro-Israel group violating those rules of protest? If we had task forces, right, to look at antisemitism, then we would also have task forces, not just on Islamophobia, but task forces on anti-Palestinian bigotry, right. It’s a different thing than Islamophobia. Most Muslims are not Palestinian, and not all Palestinians are Muslims. And if we imagine a world where we did all of those things, where we asked, ‘is there bigotry towards Palestinians?’ at the same time that we asked the question, ‘do we have bigotry towards Jews?’, then, in fact, the entire antisemitism conversation would be completely different, right.

Because if one had to concede that startin…

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We continue our discussion of the assault on academic freedom, especially for pro-Palestinian activists, with Columbia University’s Nadia Abu El-Haj. She is a Professor at Barnard College and Columbia University and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies. She just published an essay in The New York Review of Books entitled, “Mahmoud is Not Safe,” about the detention of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

In Their Attack on US Universities, Trump and the ADL are Trying to Redefine Jewishness Itself

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com

Because of the free speech crisis engulfing Columbia University, we changed the topic of today’s Zoom call.

Our new guest is Columbia Professor James Schamus, award-winning screenwriter, producer, and author of this public letter to fellow Jewish faculty at the university.

We discuss the Trump administration’s assault on pro-Palestinian protest and on Ame…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com

I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next few months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.

I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, Fida Jiryis’ beautiful memoir, Stranger in My Own Land.

I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.

Even Palestinians from Gaza who have made it to the United States can use assistance. For instance, Salah El Sadi, who is looking for help finding work in his field. He writes:

“I am originally from Gaza, Palestine. I arrived in the United States as a Fulbright Scholar in mid-September 2023 to participate in a professional training program. However, due to the outbreak of war in Gaza, I have been unable to return home and currently find myself in a challenging situation. My wife and two children were evacuated to Oman, while many of my relatives remain in Gaza under extremely difficult conditions. Despite these challenges, I remain committed to my professional journey and contributing my expertise in meaningful ways. I have a strong background in environmental sustainability, water purification, chemistry, laboratory management, and climate resilience. I am currently seeking job opportunities, research collaborations, or consulting roles where I can contribute my expertise in environmental sustainability, chemistry, laboratory science, or climate innovation.”

If you can help Salah, his resume and contact information are here.

Friday Zoom Call

This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. This Friday is the holiday of Purim, in which Jews read the Book of Esther, a fascinating and troubling text whose themes of political intrigue, imperial power and catastrophic violence are deeply relevant to contemporary Jewish discourse about the destruction of Gaza. Our guest will be Rabbi Lexie Botzum, a faculty member at Yashrut, who last year authored this provocative essay about Purim, “Discarding Haman’s Garb: Refusing the Roles of Empire.”

Friday’s zoom call is for paid subscribers.

Book Tour

(We’ll update this every week.)

On Monday, March 10 and Tuesday, March 11, I’ll be giving four talks in Michigan. On March 10 at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and at St David’s Episcopal Church, and on March 11 at St. Matthew’s & St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church and at T’chiyah synagogue.

On Monday, March 17, I’ll be speaking at Mishkan Shalom synagogue in Philadelphia.

On Tuesday, March 18, I’ll be debating an old classmate, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, on the proposition “The oppression of Palestinians in non-democratic Israel has been systematic and profound” at the Soho Forum in New York.

On Tuesday, March 25, I’ll be speaking at Middlebury College.

On Monday, April 7, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School.

On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.

On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.

Book Interviews

I talked with the Haaretz and Wisdom of Crowds podcasts about Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.

Sources Cited in this Week’s Video

The Trump administration’s attack on Columbia University.

The University of Chicago’s 2024 study on campus antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

Professor Eitan Hersh and Laura Royden’s 2021 study of antisemitism and political ideology in the US.

Things to Read

(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)

On the Jewish Currents (subscribe!) podcast, Alex Kane talks to Tariq Kenney-Shawa and Mouin Rabbani about Trump’s fantasy of expelling Palestinians from Gaza.

Raef Zreik, Monica Marks and 972Mag on the Palestinian Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott (PACBI)’s claim that the Oscar-winning film, No Other Land, violates the BDS movement’s guidelines on “normalization.”

For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s “Occupied Thoughts” podcast, I talked with Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani about Israel’s plans for Gaza and Syria, and the film No Other Land.

Cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco on Gaza.

Fewer than half as many Democrats hold a favorable opinion of Israel as did four years ago.

See you on Friday, March 14,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So, the Trump administration is making an example of Columbia University. They’re saying they’re going to cut $400 million in federal aid to Columbia University, thus throwing the university into financial turmoil because of the claim that Columbia University has permitted a culture of antisemitism. And this is part of a broader assault on American universities, throwing many of them into financial turmoil, based on this claim that these universities have become hotbeds of antisemitism.

Now, there is antisemitism on college campuses. Of course, there’s other forms of bigotry that exist on college campuses, of course. But to understand how Orwellian the Trump administration’s move is, you have to understand that the best data we have about antisemitism, first of all, shows that college students are less antisemitic than Americans as a whole. And secondly, that the Americans who tend to have the highest and the most antisemitic attitudes tend to be exactly the kinds of Americans who are part of Trump’s political coalition. So, the Trump administration, which is claiming that it’s acting to protect Jewish students against antisemitism, the best evidence we have suggests that the Trump coalition is much, much more antisemitic itself than are the college students that they are claiming are these hotbeds of antisemitism.

I want to look at a couple of data points that I think illustrate this. The first is a University of Chicago study from last March. And the University of Chicago study did something important. It asked college students, and Americans as a whole, about their attitudes towards Zionism and also their attitudes towards Jews. It asks them these questions separately. Now, groups like the Anti-Defamation League don’t ask these questions separately because they’re deeply invested in suggesting that the two are one and the same, right. Again, they again and again say that essentially to be Jewish is to be Zionist, and therefore, that anti-Zionist attitudes for them are inherently antisemitic.

But, in fact, it’s simply not true empirically, because when you ask people about their attitudes towards Israel or Zionism on the one hand, and their attitudes towards Jews on the other, you find that the opinions about the two actually radically diverge, right. So, the University of Chicago found that college students were indeed far more anti-Zionist than Americans as a whole, which reflects the kind of age breakdown that we’re seeing more generally, that they were three times as likely to be anti-Zionist. But college students were less likely—less likely—to express anti-Jewish attitudes than were Americans as a whole.

So, when the University of Chicago asked questions like, do the Jews have too much power? Do Jews care about anyone but themselves? When Jews are violently attacked, do they deserve it? They found that college students were significantly less likely to give antisemitic answers to those questions even though they were more likely to be anti-Zionist than Americans as a whole. And when you look at Americans as a whole, and you say, which are the group of Americans who have the highest degree of antisemitic attitudes, you find that those Americans who express the most antisemit…

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Our guest is Jordan Elgrably, Editor in Chief of The Markaz Review and co-editor with Malu Halasa of the new anthology, Sumud: A New Palestinian Reader. We talk about themes in contemporary Palestinian writing and how that writing can help us better understand the horrors in Gaza and across Palestine and Israel.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe